It is with great pleasure and humble thanks on this Easter that we make available the small but important Elizabeth Ann Seton collection. This collection includes letters from Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton to Matthias and Joseph O’Conway. Matthias, a prominent Philadelphian, especially within the Catholic community, was the father of Cecilia O’Conway, Philadelphia’s first nun and the first woman to join Seton’s order, the Sisters of Charity. The correspondence is personal in nature and relates to several members of the O’Conway family. Members of the Digital Library team are working on formatting transcriptions of the letters for increased readability.

This also marks a first for the Digital Library: the scanning of materials physically owned and of course created by a Saint. Indeed actually touching and photographing these sheets of paper involved treating the objects with the highest degree of reverence. Speaking for only myself, handling the letters as a scanner was a sacred experience.